Prison state.

More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year, in addition to more than $5 billion spent by the federal government, according to a report released today.

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving even far more populous China a distant second, noted the report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

The ballooning prison population is largely the result of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been hit particularly hard: One in nine black men age 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women age 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 white women in the same age group.

While studies generally find that imprisoning more offenders reduces crime, the effect is influenced by changes in the unemployment rate, wages, the ratio of police officers to residents, and the share of young people in the population.

In addition, when it comes to preventing repeat offenses by nonviolent criminals -- who make up about half of the incarcerated population -- alternative punishments such as community supervision and mandatory drug counseling that are far less expensive may prove just as or more effective than jail time.

But heaven forbid our political caste stops looking tough.

More here.

Hey, remember that political progress in Iraq?

Something big happened to those bills on their way to becoming laws! I don't want to spoil the surprise, but you can read all about it in a new McClatchy article, titled "Iraqi leaders veto law Bush administration hailed as political breakthrough!"

Just when you think the Iraqi people might finally be catching a break.

I wish I knew whether or not this was slimy.

I missed it when it was going on, but on Monday Howard Dean and the DNC officially filed a complaint with FEC over McCain's public financing dodge.

“We are in this complaint to the FEC asserting that the senator and his campaign are still bound to the conditions by matching funds including the spending limits of approximately $56 million dollars,” Dean said.

. . .

The DNC’s complaint alleges that McCain used the promise of matching funds to secure the multi-million dollar bank loan. He also said McCain has benefited from the public financing system which helps facilitate candidates’ ability to get their names on state ballots. He said these actions bind McCain to the system, and he is asking the FEC to investigate those issues.

“The law is very clear. He can not withdraw if he has used the promise of matching funds as collateral for his loan,” Dean said, “John McCain cannot unilaterally withdrawal from the spending limitations.”

Now, all of that is true, and the FEC should be looking into it.

That said, McCain may have been too clever by half, but I'm not really thrilled at the prospect of the DNC effectively trying to silence the Republican candidate from now `til August; it's a sanction that extends well beyond the misbehaving party and down through the electorate as a whole - and it doesn't really serve us well.

[Not least because it would probably force him to rely on 527s, which could be counted upon to be way more venomous - or way more competent at being venomous - than the candidate himself.]

So, again, I personally would rather see an investigation, a fine and a reprimand, but a viable campaign while it's all going down. And it looks like Dean disagrees.

But, alas, I dunno whether Dean's going overboard, or whether he's just taking the step he's required to take by the system. Does the adversarial campaign have to file some kind of motion if there's to be an investigation? Or is it that Dean knows there's not going to be an investigation and he wants some free negative press for McCain? Or what?

Whatever. For the record, I personally want McCain to keep raising money. He may not personally deserve it, but I think it's right.

Gasp!

Sen. Barbara Boxer released internal Environmental Protection Agency documents Tuesday that add to her suspicion that the White House directed the agency's rejection of California's tough fuel-standards waiver.

I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!

More here.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan . . .

The secular party that won last week's elections in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province plans to open peace talks with al Qaida-allied Islamic insurgents, a drastic departure from the military crackdowns that the national army has pursued with U.S. backing for the last five years.

The Awami National Party says army offensives in the tribal region abutting the province have killed, maimed and displaced untold numbers of civilians, driven recruits into the arms of the radicals and helped fuel a surge in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks across the country.

"The war against terror has failed. So there should be no war," said Haji Mohammad Adeel, one of the party's most senior leaders. "The only solution is peace. We will do it with negotiations, not with bombs, not with guns, not with airstrikes."

To convince militants to quit the insurgency and to weaken the popular support that allows al Qaida to maintain a sanctuary in the region, the party pledges to build clinics, schools, roads and other infrastructure for the area's 3 million desperately poor people.

The party also wants to end the anachronistic, colonial-era system under which the seven Federally Administered Tribal Agencies have been run and fold them into the province, where they'd be subject to Pakistan's political, legal and economic systems.

The people of the tribal agencies are "not equal with other citizens of Pakistan. The Supreme Court and superior courts of Pakistan are not allowed to extend their jurisdiction there," Adeel said. "When there are no jobs, no source of income, no health facilities, no educational facilities, no justice, no political rights, what can you expect if people are offered money and guns?"

The party's plan and the support it's drawn from other political parties may help explain why the White House continues to advocate a key role for Pakistan's much-reviled president, Pervez Musharraf, despite the defeat of his political allies in the elections Feb. 18.

More here.

I'm not any kind of an expert on the region - but, for what it's worth, some of that sounds appealing but problematic, and some of it sounds, at best, painfully naive. Whatever Musharraf's stated position on the Taliban in the north-west, the Pakistani military has tried rapprochement, to ugly effect; the most obvious example at hand is the story of Nek Mohammed, a Talibani from the Shikai Valley in South Waziristan who cut a deal with the Pakistani government and/or military (the Frontline episode that covered it couldn't get a clear lead on which) in 2004 - money in exchange for peace and the handover of bad actors. He took the cash, reneged on the deal, and apparently directed the assassinations of all the local tribal leaders who had served as intermediaries for Islamabad.

My point isn't that the Taliban sorts can't be reasoned with under any circumstances; it's that right now, in that part of Pakistan, they're winning, and there's no glaring reason to believe that they'll go smoothly from that position to one of willing cooperation with a government they consider illegitimate and immoral. Cutting deals with them now - after a wave of assassinations (including Prince Asfandiar Amir Zeb in Swat and, in all likelihood, that of Benazir Bhutto), no less - just seems likely to lead to a few days' peace while they go about some new weapons buys.

That said, moving in and improving the lot of the people of the northwest - and dragging them under the umbrella of the Pakistani legal system - is an excellent idea, if it can be done (and if the participants can be protected). Enfranchisement! Education! Rah!

But, again, there are security concerns. Frankly, I'd think to do it, you'd have to have the Pakistani military move into the seven bastard provinces in huge numbers - hundreds of troops for every reopened girls' school, nationally-sponsored bodyguards to supplement (and ideally replace) local tribal leaders' paramilitaries, and many, many forensic accountants to make sure the money being spent wasn't ending up paying for the Radio Mullah's new broadcast towers.

And I don't really see any of that happening. This looks much more like simple appeasement.

In short, I actually share the Bush administration's concerns for once; I suspect a pretty sizable percentage of the Pakistani population does as well. I just don't know that there's anything productive we can do about it, apart from waiting for the policies to blow up in their supporters' faces.

Nobody ever said realism was fun.

Assigning points.

So, the last Democratic debate before Texas and Ohio - possibly the last Democratic presidential debate of 2008 - has come and gone, and a quick survey of the coverage at the major newspapers seems to indicate that Senator Clinton didn't do herself any favors. [Full disclosure: I watched Frontline instead. All my commentary is based on secondary sources.] It's not entirely her fault; not only was the bar for real success almost impossibly high, it also sounds like Russert had it in for her. And then there's garbage like this . . .

Tuesday night, fate even seemed to support her point about the favoritism surrounding Mr. Obama: after the first break, MSNBC showed a second unflattering clip of Mrs. Clinton mocking Mr. Obama’s inspirational speeches, which to viewers, at least, might seem like the network was piling on. Mr. Williams sheepishly explained that the clip was shown in error and that his producers had intended to give Mr. Obama’s embarrassing video moments equal time. He then went on nevertheless to ask Mr. Obama to comment on Mrs. Clinton’s video, giving him yet another chance to show off his grace and even temper. “Well, I thought Senator Clinton showed some good humor there,” he said with a twinkle. “I would give her points for delivery.”

. . . which (apart from Obama's response) is pretty well inexcusable, even if it was accidental.

[To be fair, Obama suffered some ridiculousness as well, and I guess he did the better job of shrugging it off.]

As for the debate itself, it seems to've been waged on mostly substantive ground, even if nobody's quite sure how sincere either candidate was on the subject of NAFTA. Mandates were apparently fought to a draw; Iraq arguments went on traditional lines, which means Obama won. I dunno - it looks like two thoughtful people sparred, and nothing much was accomplished (apart from, again, Russert making an ass of himself in primetime). The big story in the morning is probably going to be Clinton's ill-considered use of Saturday Night Live sketches as campaign props; by now she should just know not to try soundbite zingers. They only work from candidates who seem stupid enough to believe in them.

Meanwhile, Marc Ambinder is reporting that some of her staffers are planning to bail if she loses Texas and tries to keep going, and given that it's looking more and more likely that she's going to lose Texas I guess we're formally in campaign death watch mode. For my own part, I'm feeling less aggravated by the wild, flailing attacks, and more melancholy.

This has been an uncomfortable race to watch, even if the guy I favored has for the most part played it masterfully. There's a broad, substantive case to be made against Clinton - I've come at it from a few angles over the past several months, and more serious minds have done it better - but way too often we've instead had her put down for "cackling," or for creeping out the reporters on her tour bus, or for getting on the wrong side of Chris Matthews' personal take on gender politics, and that sucks. The best thing to come from her campaign should never have been the humiliation of Mark Penn, and yet here we are.

It's a shame, is what I'm saying, and the little indignities tonight are part of the pattern.

. . .

Now watch her win everything on Tuesday, thereby sending me back into conniptions.

Hello, sanity!

Recently, on rare and awkward occasions when I've been pulled away from my sweet, safe internets and actually find myself interacting with people directly, I've had a few conversations about Obama's relative lack of populist ambition/rhetoric (compared to Edwards and Clinton 8.2, anyway), and . . . well, yeah. Some of that's down to the lack of play his domestic agenda gets, but some of it's legit. I assume it comes at least in part from his background in community organizing; his heart's in the right place, but I think his experience would tend to encourage incrementalism. I'm honestly not sure whether it's good or bad - ask me again when we see whether, in practice, mandate-free health care reform seems aimed at later mandates or at single-payer (dare I hope?) or at a muddle.

Still, it's worth noting that there's really only so much radicalism that can be crammed into a successful presidential campaign (IMHO, anyway) - and for those of us who fixate on foreign policy ups and downs he's been more consistently rewarding than anyone else (though I do give Edwards major props for disavowing "the War on Terror" as a useful operational paradigm).

Anyway, all of that's an unwieldy introduction to the following:

"I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud ap-proach [sic] to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," leading Democratic presidential contender Illinois Senator Barack Obama said Sunday.

"If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress," he said.

He also criticized the notion that anyone who asks tough questions about advancing the peace process or tries to secure Israel by anyway other than "just crushing the opposition" is being "soft or anti-Israel."

Obama made the comments in a closed-door meeting with several members of Cleveland's Jewish community, who will be participating in the crucial Ohio primary to be held next Tuesday.

I'd be even more impressed if he'd said it in New York, mind you - but whatever. The majority of American Jewish opinion is behind Obama here, but there's a very vocal faction that isn't; it's a shame that pissing them off counts as an act of courage, but, well, it does - the Republicans are already questioning his commitment to Israel (and given how John Hagee and the like define "commitment to Israel," I'm not surprised), and that noise is only going to get louder - and so I'm grateful for it.

There's more here ("here" being an editorial from the NY Sun) for anyone who wants reassurance that Obama's approach doesn't automatically include hug-ins with Hamas.

A return to the age of affronts.

Before the presidential campaign really kicked into high gear, posting here at the Wall was thinning out - this, for the record, will be the fifty-third post for February, 2008. In all of December, 2007, there were thirteen. At my lowest points, when I did toss up some comment or link, I liked to sigh wistfully and allude to one day taking a break or giving up on blogging altogether or just going into hiding.

The campaign season, for all its frustrations, brings dynamism and the prospect of change - not all of it inspires hope, but it baffles passivity; talking about the sins of the Bush administration is different. I tend to regard documenting all the hallmarks of civilization the bad side of the right wing has pissed away as a kind of civic duty - one can't stop them, and one can't punish them, but one can and should at least stand witness. That said, it's deadening, and a lot of the time it feels ultimately pointless - again, there's never any relief and there's never any justice - and I've really enjoyed getting away from it, and moving toward the light.

Well, so much for the light. Bushworld is demanding attention again.

Last night, 60 Minutes did an excellent piece on probably the greatest single abuse of the justice system of the Bush years - the prosecutions and conviction of the Democratic former governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman. You can watch the segment here, or read up on the case here, but the long and the short of it is that prominent Republicans are saying that a Democratic politician was hounded into jail for a "crime" (giving a major campaign contributor a job) that isn't a crime anywhere else in American politics (note, for example, the hundred and forty-six "Bush Pioneers" who ended up with padded resumes) because the Republicans couldn't beat him otherwise. The case the government brought came with false testimony, concealed evidence, blatant conflicts of interest, and - of course - a string of professional prosecutors who took career hits rather than obey orders to bring the bogus charges to court. Just read the summary if you have the time; I know it sounds like a lefty conspiracy theory, but it seems to be true and it's absolutely astonishing.

The provisionally good news is that Siegelman's lawyers are now calling for a special counsel to investigate the people who brought this mess about, and given how definitive a hammering to the case the 60 Minutes piece represents I assume that even Mukasey will have to comply. [Though, to be fair, Gonzales almost certainly wouldn't have. One's faith in the system these days pretty much has to be tentative.]

But there's really no way to overestimate just how deeply in the corruption has settled. The appalling illustration du jour is the presentation of the 60 Minutes episode in Alabama itself: the Siegelman piece was blocked, at least in northern parts of the state (and southern Tennessee). Scott Horton at Harper's says:

I am now hearing from readers all across Northern Alabama—from Decatur to Huntsville and considerably on down—that a mysterious “service interruption” blocked the broadcast of only the Siegelman segment of 60 Minutes this evening. The broadcaster is Channel 19 WHNT, which serves Northern Alabama and Southern Tennessee. This station was noteworthy for its hostility to Siegelman and support for his Republican adversary. The station ran a trailer stating “We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring ‘The Prosecution of Don Siegelman.’ It was a techincal problem with CBS out of New York.” I contacted CBS News in New York and was told that “There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.” Channel 19 is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners, who can be contacted through Rhonda Barnat, 212-371-5999 or rb@abmac.com. Oak Hill Partners represents interests of the Bass family, which contribute heavily to the Republican Party. Viewers displeased about the channel’s decision to censor the broadcast should express their views directly to the station management or to the owners.

Welcome to Soviet Alabama, where the state and the media and the Party are all the same damn thing - and where members of the opposition go to jail. It's what Karl Rove's permanent Republican majority would look like, and it's already here in parts of the country.

What can you say to that?

Our liberal media.

Today at CNN.com, we got as a "quick vote" question, "Does Barack Obama show the proper patriotism for someone who wants to be president of the United States?"

Stay classy, guys!


UPDATE: You can catch Obama's response to the meme here. Here's hoping he doesn't have to repeat himself every day between now and November.

It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

Or, in John McCain's case, the unconsidered need to declare himself in a state of total ethical purity.

See the likes of this . . .

A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman's clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.

Just hours after the Times's story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response that depicted the letters as routine correspondence handled by his staff—and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC," the campaign said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue," McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK. "He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint."

. . . and then, just for that extra je ne sais quoi, the follow-up.

The McCain campaign said Thursday that the senator had not met with Paxson or Iseman on the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde and Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding," the campaign said in a statement.

But Paxson said yesterday, "I remember going there to meet with him." He recalled that he told McCain: "You're head of the Commerce Committee. The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."

McCain attorney Robert S. Bennett played down the contradiction between the campaign's written answer and Paxson's recollection.

"We understood that he [McCain] did not speak directly with him [Paxson]. Now it appears he did speak to him. What is the difference?" Bennett said. "McCain has never denied that Paxson asked for assistance from his office. It doesn't seem relevant whether the request got to him through Paxson or the staff. His letters to the FCC concerning the matter urged the commission to make up its mind. He did not ask the FCC to approve or deny the application. It's not that big a deal."

There's a sense in which he's right, of course; if there'd just been a concession that things looked a little dirty and a couple of bashful mea culpas, and by now the press might well have moved on. Without a sex angle, stories like this generally only get play for as long as fresh blood is coming into the water.

As it is, though, McCain's cutting himself as he dogpaddles. Getting caught telling easily disproven untruths in a scandal that hinges on public integrity is amateur night stuff, and yet he can't seem to help himself. In a way, that's almost a redeeming quality; what he's saying probably isn't deeply calculated to deceive. It seems more stupidly reflexive than that.

A great selling point for a potential president, obviously. He may be too friendly with lobbyists for the public good, but when he issues bogus denials he's probably just mouthing off!

[I love that there's lobbying actually going on from the back of McCain's bus, by the way.]

Incidentally, the man has another scandal developing in real time - he's indicating that he's going to blow off the FEC when it comes down to campaign fundraising this cycle. As I mentioned a day or so back, he might well get away with it, but - if I may quote Paul Kiel as he paraphrases somebody else:

It's a take that drew a sharp analogy from Republican election lawyer Jan Baran, who was quoted by The Washington Post as saying that McCain's position ""is [sic] like saying you're going to break into houses because the sheriff is out of town."

It's a good line. Shame it reflects reality.

. . .

For the record, though, this guy's still ten thousand times less personally offensive to me than our current president. How sad is that?

Silly Pakistan! No democracy for you!

The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.

U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party's rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation.

The U.S. is urging the Pakistani political leaders who won the elections to form a new government quickly and not press to reinstate the judges whom Musharraf ousted last year, Western diplomats and U.S. officials said Wednesday. If reinstated, the jurists likely would try to remove Musharraf from office.

Bush's policy of hanging on to Musharraf has caused friction between the White House and the State Department , with some career diplomats and other specialists arguing that the administration is trying to buck the political tides in Pakistan , U.S. officials said.

Officials in the White House and the intelligence community fear that the longer Pakistan remains without a new government, the deeper the gridlock, threatening the progress made in the elections toward greater stability and helping the country's Islamic extremists.

One Western diplomat said, however, that the strategy could backfire if Pakistanis feel betrayed after voting to kick Musharraf from office.

"This is dangerous," said the diplomat.

The whole sorry story is here, and kudos to McClatchy for catching it.

I can't even begin to articulate how stupid this seems - that'll be a full-time job for future historians. What I can say in the short period of time I'm allotting myself is this little synopsis: Musharraf's dictatorship is incompetent, widely despised, and increasingly unstable. In a genuine progressive triumph, the Pakistani people rejected the hapless ex-general at the polls, and turned 155 out of 342 parliamentary seats to members of two relatively moderate, relatively modernizing, extremely anti-Musharraf parties, which have since declared the intention of forming the basis for a coalition government. Of the remaining seats, I believe a grand total of six went to the radical fundamentalist bloc. This would seem to be a win for the oft-cited freedom-loving people of the West. Maybe not a perfect win, insofar as we can't be sure the coalition will love us more than a baby loves her mother's touch, but in the long term a win.

If, however, the United States (under the exceedingly unpopular George W. Bush) coerces the governing parties into supporting President Musharraf and kissing off the illegally disbanded Supreme Court despite the mandate from the voters, then those governing parties are instantly discredited. Boom. And while Pakistan's urban areas aren't ever likely to sign on voluntarily to Taliban-style medievalism as a way of life, there are going to be a lot of people on the margins who see the fundamentalists that boycotted the election as the only political figures in the country with the integrity to stand up to outside pressure.

This would seem to be a loss.

A stupid, unnecessary loss at that, and one gained by rejecting our own guiding principles in the name of some shimmering mirage that George Bush sees as the clear path of expediency. In its own quiet way, this could be an even bigger foreign policy blunder than launching the Iraq war - a feat that I'd heretofore thought was beyond even this pack of preening nincompoops.

Sharif, so far, seems to be sticking to his guns - not unreasonably so, since Musharraf kicked him out of office and charged him with attempted murder not that long ago - and I think it behooves us all to hope that he can prevail upon Zardari to do the same. If Bush's panic attack is allowed to determine more facts on the ground, things are likely to get even worse for whoever comes into the White House next, to say nothing of the world at large.

Weaver's official statement.

Care of Chris Cillizza at the Post:

The New York Times asked for a formal interview and I said no and asked for written questions. The Times knew of my meeting with Ms. Iseman, from sources they didn't identify to me, and asked me about that meeting. I did not inform Senator McCain that I asked for a meeting with Ms. Iseman.

Her comments, which had gotten back to some of us, that she had strong ties to the Commerce Committee and his staff were wrong and harmful and I so informed her and asked her to stop with these comments and to not be involved in the campaign. Nothing more and nothing less.

I responded to the Times on the record about a meeting they already knew about. The campaign received a copy of my response to the Times the same day, which was in late December.

From the day I first approached John about running for President in 1997 and through today, I have always wanted John to be president. The country needs him at this perilous time. From the moment I left the campaign until today, not one day -- not one --has gone by that I haven't reactively or pro-actively talked with the campaign leadership, with state leadership about how the campaign and how to win. To suggest anything else is wrong, a lie and meant to do nothing but harm.

Okay, then. Some thoughts:

First, it seems like the primary purpose here is to tell people that the Times' original article was not Weaver's fault. The investigation was already underway, reporters contacted him, and he responded under the most controlled circumstances he could arrange; he still supports McCain. Got it.

The part of the story that concerned me most has been pretty well confirmed: Weaver took it upon himself to confront Iseman without involving McCain. [It could be that he believed it beneath the senator's notice, but that's not what Weaver says and it's not what he implies.] He goes on to say that their discussion strictly concerned stories she was telling around Washington - what she was saying he never articulates nor denies. For that matter, neither does he address the general contents of the Times article; there's no furious defense of McCain's innocence, just a statement that he'd make a great president.

As non-denials go, it's actually kind of touching. But it's still a non-denial.

McCain's hugely, incredibly bad day - from another angle!

Turns out the FEC may not let the man drop out of public financing now that he's the de facto candidate.

To review briefly: in December, McCain, who'd earlier opted in to the public financing system, needed cash. The FEC had already certified that he was owed $5.8 million in public matching funds -- but he wouldn't be getting that money until March. And he didn't want to absolutely commit yet to using that system, because it would limit his campaign to spending only $54 million through the end of August. And FEC rules say that using public matching funds as collateral locks a candidate into the system.

So McCain struck a deal with the bank: he promised to only commit to using the system if he lost the primary. If he won, he would opt out of the program, and he'd be more than able to pay the bank back, because the funds would come flowing. McCain's lawyers were evidently very pleased with the canniness of this arrangement.

If you're confused by this, don't worry: so, apparently, is FEC Chairman David Mason. McCain officially notified the FEC earlier this month that he was no longer in the public financing system for the primary. Now Mason has responded with a letter saying essentially, not so fast. It looks like you used the public matching funds as collateral.

Whoops.



UPDATE: Ah, but I'd forgotten that the FEC is underpopulated at the moment. There don't seem to be enough members to do anything this year, so McCain may well get to glide by.

Fifteen hours later.

Still a lot of noise around the McCain story, huh?

How's it all playing out? And - of much more importance to my own ego-fueled mind - how much of an ass did I make of myself in my knee-jerk reactions? Well, I think I get a few points for calling the Limbaugh team's response, though I still don't know how much influence it's going to have with the Republican faithful - and, of course, it's premature to say that the venom-spitters are going to embrace the Republican candidate now; it is possible to hate the New York Times and to keep on despising McCain at the same time. This . . .

Limbaugh added: “This is what you get when you walk across the aisle and try to make these people your friends. I'm not surprised in the least that the NYT would try to take out John McCain. Predicted this, in fact, way back in the early 2000s. Sen. McCain courted the media, cultivated them, even bragged that the media was his ‘base.’ I cringed when I heard it because the media turning on McCain was as predictable as the sun rising in the morning.”

. . . isn't a ringing endorsement of McCain's judgement, after all.

As for the Iseman case itself, so far there's not much evidence of McCain swinging more for her clients (with one minor exception that he's apparently been trying to obscure) than for any other big media interests. Not to get all smug, but I called that, too.

At the time I thought - and still think - that the real meat of the 1999 business is tied up in the matter of McCain's staff's reactions. They apparently believed that he was acting inappropriately (or at least counter-productively), they apparently got him to agree that that was so, and yet still they had to maneuver around him to try to keep the situation from escalating. Insofar as that tells us something about how the people closest to him perceive his judgement and capacity for self-control, it's something I think I have a legitimate need to know.

The problem, which I failed to flag overnight, is that two of the three main sources for that time period are anonymous; all we know about them is that they no longer work for McCain. The third source, John Weaver, validated at least some of what they said - according to him, Iseman was enough of a problem for him to need to set her down at Union Station for a talk - but for him the emphasis was on the stories Iseman was telling around town, not, strictly speaking, the senator's behavior. [Isaac Chotiner feels otherwise, but it takes some really fine-toothed combing to get to where he is.] If the two anonymous sources are dispassionately telling the truth, Weaver's take is consistent and amplifies their own. If, on the other hand, they've got grudges to peddle and they're spinning some minor tension into a big mess, then Weaver's statement is too limited to illuminate.

That said, this isn't happening in a vacuum, and none of the sources have vanished from the face of the earth; if Weaver believes that the situation is being misrepresented, I assume he's going to grab a megaphone soon, and then we'll know. If he stays silent, I guess we'll know something from that, too.

All of that said, the Iseman saga took place more than eight years ago. Insofar as it represents part of a behavioral pattern, it's interesting, but . . . well, to the extent that it was driven by the emotions of its moment, and the specific relationship between McCain and Iseman, that moment's long gone.

As far as the pattern goes, and the legitimacy of the story, and the extent to which certain amateur pundits need to be appalled with themselves for making a big deal of it, I'm still waiting on a denial/expansion that actually touches upon my points of concern. We'll see how it goes.



UPDATE: Meanwhile, TNR has the story behind the story - a look at the goings-on in Bill Keller's New York Times in the months that this article was being prepared.

Muqtada flexes his muscles.

With deadly attacks against U.S. targets increasing around Baghdad, anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr raised the possibility Wednesday that he may not renew a six-month cease-fire widely credited for helping slash violence.

The cease-fire is due to expire Saturday, and there were fears, especially among minority Sunni Arabs, that the re-emergence of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia could return Iraq to where it was just a year ago _ with sectarian death squads prowling the streets of a country on the brink of civil war.

A surge of violence would also make it all the more difficult for Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to reach agreements on sharing power and wealth, and greatly complicate the debate in the United States on whether and how quickly to withdraw troops.

More here.

Juan Cole's post on the subject seems to've been disabled by a bout of delete fever, but the unfinished sentence that remains seems to say that Sadrists have been getting arrested and weeded out over the last few months, and presumably that Muqtada has to reassert himself politically lest he start seeming weakened. Makes sense; I don't have the sense that the man's really very smart, but he basically seems like a rational actor if you understand his point of view.

Regardless: yeah, an awful lot of the peace on the ground over the last several months can pretty clearly be attributed to the fact that the most influential bloc of Shi'ite crazies in Baghdad weren't dragging Sunnis out of hospitals and executing them anymore. I hope (I think with some cause) that al-Sadr has too much to lose to turn the violence back on now - particularly since he's getting his bogus religious credentials/public legitimacy all lined up and can soon make a stab at a more conventional Islamic statesman role. Otherwise, the capital city probably goes from being a mere wasteland to an out-and-out hellhole again.

As long as I'm spreading sunshine and joy wherever I go, I'll observe that Marc Lynch has been withholding judgement on those three good (and pivotal) pieces of legislation that the Iraqis passed a few weeks back.

Thus far, the reporting in the Western, Arab and Iraqi press has been very light on the details, mostly repeating what Parliament spokesman Khaled al-Attiya said in his press conference. Given the centrality of the details, it isn't encouraging to hear that "the parliamentary success was clouded because many of the most contentious details were simply postponed, raising the possibility that the accord could again break into rancorous factional disputes in future debates on the same issues." [quote fixed - thanks, Eric] I'm relieved that the speaker didn't have to exercise his threatened nuclear option - dissolving the Parliament - and that these three crucial laws have finally been passed after so many months of wrangling. That's good news on its merits. But I'm also reserving judgement on the implications of the laws until we see the details and the fallout.

I've only been able to get hold of the text of one of the laws so far - the amnesty law. As with the deBaathification reform, it's hard to tell how extensive the amnesty will turn out to be from the text of the law. Gven the long list of exceptions detailed in article 2, it all comes down to interpretation and implementation. If applied generously and in a spirit of reconciliation, it could be quite extensive and build considerable goodwill (even if it also puts a sizable number of insurgency-age young men, fresh from prison, back onto the streets). If applied rigorously and in a sectarian spirit, a lot of the prisoners who the Sunnis hope to see released might not get out and backlash would set in very quickly. So as with all these laws, wait and see.

How lucky do we feel?

At last! A real scandal!

So, I guess John McCain is about to have a very bad day.

Mind you, there's a remote chance that he'll get some benefit from this. I know it sounds deranged, but it's true! If ever there was a single pretext that could inspire Rush Limbaugh and the crazy brigade to start falling in line behind McCain, it's a sensational exposé from the damn liberal media! The pushback has already begun, and I've gotta assume that - as with any attack on the New York Times - the professional haters are going to be tempted to join in.

That said, it's pretty widely recognized that the story would've come out much earlier in the primary season had it not been for heavy pressure from McCain's lawyers - and if you didn't want the man to be your candidate in the first place, and if you think he's damaged the party and only just managed to cover it up long enough to pull one over on the voters, then maybe you'll be more inclined to blame the gentleman himself. In which case McCain is probably going to have a very bad month.

But, sorry, I'm ahead of myself. The Times has a piece out that offers a bit of a retrospective on the ethical problems that have dogged McCain through his years in office; the most substantial bits deal with McCain's time as one of the "Keating Five," doing improper favors for a buddy in the savings and loan industry who ended up costing American taxpayers almost three and a half billion dollars, while the parts that are going to be turning up on the TV news concern a very close relationship he had about eight years ago with a blond lobbyist. [They both deny having had an affair, but McCain's staffers at the time thought otherwise. Everyone, the candidate included, seems to agree that they were inappropriately close, with the lobbyist in question apparently following McCain from event to event and enjoying extended private sessions with the senator.]

Some of McCain's friends were assembled to offer character testimony, but - unfortunately for him - the best they could manage was that his native recklessness and arrogance sometimes make him blind to the impression he's making. He's not crooked; he's just a borderline megalomaniac!

It's not the most flattering take in the world.

Now, Josh Marshall quite rightly notes that there's a lot of story behind the story; to him, it reads like something fiery that was eaten by lawyers and then regurgitated in a blander, less compelling form. Ezra Klein sees the same, and is unsympathetic to the newspaper's plight; according to him, "the substance of the story is whether McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, and whether he then advocated for her clients improperly. Those two things either happened or they didn't, and the paper should just tell us which it is." To that, I say yes and no - if there's a case to be made that McCain pitched legislation and/or voted in a manner contrary to the dictates of his conscience, sure, we need to see it. But, frankly, I doubt there's any incontrovertible evidence; the man's a Republican, and he's therefore pretty damn likely to vote for deregulation regardless of his relationship with any individual lobbyist. Besides, no politician so preoccupied with his own self-perceived reputation as an honorable man would have failed to find a way to justify crappy votes on inexcusable laws; that's just human nature. Absent the kind of relationship that comes with receipts, I don't know what anyone could hope to find that would establish improper (as opposed to merely undue - i.e., all the lobbyists working free for his campaign) political influence.

[Note that I'm not saying I don't think there's any way to know whether or not he and Ms. Iseman had an affair. I'm positive there is a way to know, and I'm reasonably sure somebody's going to find that way - very, very soon. It's just that I don't have any right to know about candidates' sex lives unless their activities demonstrate either gross hypocrisy or proximate cause for wrongdoing in the exercise of the powers of their offices. Okay? Okay.]

All of that said, I think the Times was completely right to run that article, imperfect as it may have been. McCain is running for president; I think I, as a citizen, deserve to know that, on occasion, his aides have been forced to run around behind his back to get rid of a lobbyist who's detrimental to his effectiveness as a senator because they think he's unable to do it himself. I absolutely have a right to be informed that he has a history of accepting favors from crooked people and being oblivious to the potential ramifications. And if his response to all this reads something like the following . . .

Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign issued the following statement Wednesday night:

“It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”

. . . I damn well want to have at hand the information I need to discern whether or not the man's camp is talking shit.

And it is. It really is. The fact that he handled himself badly in the Charles Keating scene is literally beyond dispute - he talks about it in his memoirs! He may be entitled to be pissed off by the article (though, y'know, I don't see him actually denying any specific points), but it's simply not accurate to claim perfect innocence. That that's his immediate position - that he's never "violated the principles that have guided his career" - means either he's comfortable exaggerating his virtues to himself or he's inclined to underestimate the intelligence of the American citizens who're reading that newspaper.

Either way, it's not exactly reassuring in a would-be head of state.



UPDATE: The McCain camp is promising to produce some statements refuting some of the Iseman storyline - and, yeah, a lot of what I wrote above will be discredited if it turns out his staff never felt they had to stage interventions. We'll see how it goes.

The Nuremberg of our time.

Only different.

Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials are rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees in an attempt to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

Colonel Davis's criticism of the commissions has been escalating since he resigned this past October, telling the Washington Post that he had been pressured by politically appointed senior defense officials to pursue cases deemed "sexy" and of "high-interest" (such as the 9/11 cases now being pursued) in the run-up to the 2008 elections. Davis, once a staunch defender of the commissions process, elaborated on his reasons in a December 10, 2007, Los Angeles Times op-ed. "I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system," he wrote. "I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively."

Then, in an interview with The Nation in February after the six Guantánamo detainees were charged, Davis offered the most damning evidence of the military commissions' bias--a revelation that speaks to fundamental flaws in the Bush Administration's conduct of statecraft: its contempt for the rule of law and its pursuit of political objectives above all else.

When asked if he thought the men at Guantánamo could receive a fair trial, Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes--the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department. "[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time," recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, something that had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

"I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process," Davis continued. "At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, 'Wait a minute, we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals, we've got to have convictions.'"

Davis submitted his resignation on October 4, 2007, just hours after he was informed that Haynes had been put above him in the commissions' chain of command. "Everyone has opinions," Davis says. "But when he was put above me, his opinions became orders."

Ten in a row!

I think last night did it. I think there's a line that we've been edging toward or straddling or hopping back and forth over, and last night it was finally crossed and left behind. Barring some calamity, Obama's exceedingly unlikely to lose, so now we can start fretting almost exclusively about how badly damaged he and the party are going to be by the time we get to the general election. Yay!

There's a line of thinking that holds that tight primary contests benefit the participants - that rhetoric is tightened and knives are sharpened and reflexes are honed - and it's surely true to some extent. Plus, of course, Clinton and Obama are going to be capturing headlines and valuable TV minutes for as long as the kneecapping efforts are ongoing. On paper, there's an upside.

But, again, we've crossed that line. Really, I worry that the dynamic is increasingly going to look less like a conventional primary between equals and more like one of those bad-year races where a sitting incumbent is under attack from hostile insiders; there's just that whiff of destructiveness in the air. Now, admittedly, Obama doesn't have the pre-existing negatives Jimmy Carter had in 1980 - but, still, an extended period where one prominent Democrat repeatedly stands up and explains that the candidacy of the clear front-runner would be a disaster would almost certainly have some corrosive effect on popular opinion. I wouldn't mind so much if the case being made were substantial, but to have desperately contrived shit like the plagiarism charges haunting us for months, for no good reason, would just be depressing.

Ah, well. Compulsively negative I may be, but I'd still rather be sweating over this than over any of the problems that would've come from Obama losing Illinois.

Ready from day one?

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign failed to file a full slate of convention delegate candidates for Pennsylvania's April 22 primary.

This despite the possibility the primary proves critical and despite Clinton owning the full-throated support of Gov. Rendell, state Democratic Party leadership, Mayor Nutter and, presumably, the organizational skill all that entails.

And despite a Rendell-ordered extension of the filing deadline that could be viewed as more than just coincidental.

"There are a number of Clinton delegates that did not file for reasons of illness or other issues," Democratic state chairman T.J. Rooney conceded yesterday after being questioned by the Daily News.

He initially said he was unaware of the fact, but confirmed it after checking with Clinton's state delegate petition organizer.

It appears Clinton came up 10 or 11 candidates short across a number of congressional districts, including two in Philadelphia.

That's close to 10 percent of the 103 delegates to be decided by voters.

It appears the shortage would've been double that if Rendell hadn't extended last week's candidate filing deadline by a day and a half, ostensibly due to bad weather.

This at a time when Clinton's campaign, like Barack Obama's - which did file a full slate in the state - hoards delegates like diamonds.

Good God.

To be fair, the article goes on to explain that this isn't a truly catastrophic blunder; apparently, delegates can be selected after the election. It's mostly that the lack of preparedness - or maybe the lack of motivation among the pre-selected delegates - is really, really awkward for a campaign whose central thesis is its candidate's preternatural readiness for command.

And, y'know, what's worse is that it's part of a pattern. Exhibit B:

Supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are worried that convoluted delegate rules in Texas could water down the impact of strong support for her among Hispanic voters there, creating a new obstacle for her in the must-win presidential primary contest.

Several top Clinton strategists and fundraisers became alarmed after learning of the state's unusual provisions during a closed-door strategy meeting this month, according to one person who attended.

What Clinton aides discovered is that in certain targeted districts, such as Democratic state Sen. Juan Hinojosa's heavily Hispanic Senate district in the Rio Grande Valley, Clinton could win an overwhelming majority of votes but gain only a small edge in delegates. At the same time, a win in the more urban districts in Dallas and Houston -- where Sen. Barack Obama expects to receive significant support -- could yield three or four times as many delegates.

"What it means is, she could win the popular vote and still lose the race for delegates," Hinojosa said yesterday. "This system does not necessarily represent the opinions of the population, and that is a serious problem."

The disparity in delegate distribution is just one of the unusual aspects of Texas's complex system for apportioning delegates. The scheme has been in use for two decades but is coming under increased scrutiny because the March 4 presidential contest is the first in years that gives the state a potentially decisive voice in choosing the party's nominee.

To summarize: Texas is one of Clinton's two much-touted firewall states, key to her survival as a presidential candidate this cycle. Texas' election system has been in place for twenty years. Top Clinton strategists and fundraisers became alarmed when they found out how it worked this month.

These guys are giving every impression of just flailing around madly these days; they're getting shown up organizationally, and they're threatening (or at least mouthing off about) all kinds of vote-subverting nonsense to try to compensate - never mind relying on bogus plagiarism charges to drag Obama's positives down! They may still win, but if they do it's really looking like they're going to stumble accidentally into it - not a really great sign for the general election.

What didn't work.

A fair number of Western bloviators, myself included, have been pretty damn upbeat about the Pakistani election - the defeat of the pro-Musharraf camp, we've said, indicates that something probably went very right.

True, as far as it goes, but over at Tapped Adele Stan is pointing out one awkward New York Times story; apparently, in your more tribally-dominated regions of Pakistan (specifically, here, Peshawar), the zealots did a remarkably good job of convincing women that voting could get them killed. [In fact, turnout across the board was suppressed, but men were still more than twice as likely to go to the polls.]

So, the short synopsis: urban Pakistan may well have pulled out a win. The crazies in the northwest, however, are still doing everything they can to make things worse - and, yeah, women are in many ways still their preferred targets.

Just in case anyone was feeling too happy.

Good news from Cuba - with a catch.

Fidel Castro said Tuesday he would step down as the president of Cuba after a long illness, opening the way for his brother Raúl Castro or another member of his inner circle to become Cuba’s president when Parliament chooses a new leader this weekend.

The announcement was made in a letter to the nation under Mr. Castro’s name, which was read on radio and television programs that many Cubans heard as they headed to work.

Under the Cuban Constitution, a newly chosen Parliament will choose a 31-member council of state on Sunday, which in turn will chose the next president. Though Cuban officials say the process is democratic, experts on Cuban politics say the decision on a successor remains in the hands of Fidel Castro, his brother and his inner circle, many of whom hold positions in the cabinet.

From the American perspective, the most significant aspect of this is probably that it offers a perfect pretext for making our Cuban policy more rational without ever requiring us to acknowledge that what we've been doing has been counterproductive for decades. We can claim to have been brilliant and then pivot and observe that circumstances have changed!

Unfortunately, our foreign policy is still in the hands of a petulant adolescent, so instead we can expect some confrontational rhetoric and not much else.

I have a complicated system.

Looks startlingly like Pakistan allowed a relatively free and clean election - or, at the very least, like nobody jiggered an improbable win for Musharraf's loyalists. Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party seems (tentatively) to've won what it needed to win in order to form the next government.

On general principles, I'm delighted that a group of pro-democracy modernizers (more or less) has come to the fore; on the other hand, I have the sense that the party was, in recent years, very much a vehicle for the late Ms. Bhutto, and I'm not as confident as I'd like to be that the leadership is totally stable in her absence.

I'm gonna go with three-quarters of a w00t then, and hope that I can upgrade my response within the next couple of weeks.

Shit.

Up to 80 people have been killed in a suicide bombing outside the Afghan city of Kandahar, in one of the country's deadliest attacks since 2001.

The massive blast hit a crowd of people watching a dog-fighting contest.

"This suicide attack was the work of the Taleban," said Governor Assadullah Khalid, saying the death toll may rise.

Southern Afghanistan is a Taleban stronghold and last week the Kandahar governor himself was the target of an attempt on his life.

The Taleban have not claimed responsibility for the blast, but it bears all their hallmarks, says the BBC's Jon Brain in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Among those killed was Abdul Hakim, a local police chief fiercely opposed to the Taleban who is thought to have been the target of the attack.

Condolences to the grieving and the wounded. There's more at the BBC newspage, if you haven't seen the story already.

Obama, McCain and campaign finance pledges: wonking made simple!

Mark Schmitt has a fairly great post up here. To my mind, the money quote is . . .

Obama's precise statement was, and has always been, "If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." That's an artful statement, and it's not artful in a "meaning of 'is'" sense -- it's exactly the right answer. A commitment to "preserve a publicly financed election" would have to mean much more than whether both participate in the system. It would require some significant agreement about how to handle outside money, 527s, "Swift Boat"-type attack groups, party money, etc., and other factors that have undermined the last two publicly financed elections, from both sides. It is hardly an evasion to describe this as an agreement to be negotiated, rather than a simple pledge.

The side story here is why many of the the "traditional" campaign finance reform advocates and the Times and Post editorial boards still seem so hynotized by McCain-as-reformer, a pose he adopted for a period that ended years ago, that they cannot call him on his evasion of public funds in the primary, and are happy to be used to echo his first partisan attack in the general election, against someone who, unlike McCain, really has been a remarkably consistent and hard-working supporter of public financing, at both the state and national level.

. . . but, then, I have a dog in this proverbial race. In fact, honesty compels me to acknowledge that I've been aware of the "pledge" business since I saw the headline of the Post editorial accusing Obama of waffling, but I haven't been eager to read up on it; the idea that Obama would've stumbled into a lose-lose bargain with McCain was just too depressing to pursue avidly on an otherwise pleasant weekend.

Anyway, big surprise: Schmitt is mostly right and the Post is mostly wrong. The only caveat I'd include is that even the stated hope of pursuing an accord with the Republican nominee seems a little naive as I sit here in my comfy armchair; I'm not sure McCain could rein in Freedom's Watch and the next generation of swiftboating even if he sincerely wanted to - after the Rove era, I'm pretty sure the slime machine is only going to get more decentralized - and any viable Democratic candidate is going to have to be able to get affirmative messages out nationally several times a month to beat it all back.

Y'know, I really wish Kerry had sued the original swiftboaters for slander and libel, back in 2005. I have to think he had a case, and it might've put some fear into the people that drag the Republican Party down.

Free Kosovo!

It's done, and though the historical romantic in me is saddened at the doors this closes, this really is one of those times when a national divorce seems justified. As far as I can tell, the only times since at least World War I when the Serbs and the Albanians haven't been going out of their way to poke each other in the eye came under Tito, and even then the resentments didn't go away. Maybe things didn't have to come to this point - certainly, the damage done by Milosevic's rise to power on the strength of pro-Serbian demagoguery (and, later, ethnic cleansing) can't really be overstated - but what's done is done, and at least the government in Serbia has indicated it won't respond with force.

Unless the Albanians in Kosovo go back to making life miserable for the Kosovar Serbs, I guess.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is holding fast to what seems to be his favorite aphorism ("When life hands you lemons, squirt lemonade into someone's eye.") by threatening to further stir shit among the Georgian separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Why, you'd almost think he himself was responsible for acts of ethnic cleansing against non-Slavic Muslims and was getting touchy about seeing that kind of thing repudiated!

Because some things are just worth quoting at length.

According to the President and his followers, we will be -- as of the stroke of midnight tonight -- no longer safe, no longer protected, no longer snug and secure in the strong and loving arms of our Federal Government. That's because the Protect America Act -- a law which has only existed for six months yet is now indispensable to America's ability to survive and avoid being slaughtered by the Terrorists -- expires tonight.

The President himself this morning dramatically intoned: "At the stroke of midnight tonight, a vital intelligence law that is helping protect our nation will expire." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gravely pointed out: "What will happen at midnight tonight is much more significant than stump speeches, steroids or superdelegates. On Sunday, the terrorist tracking program . . . no longer will be fully operational." National Review warrior and all-around tough guy Andy McCarthy fretted: "When the Clock Strikes Midnight, We Will Be Significantly Less Safe."

This is one of the most bizarre propaganda dramas ever, even when weighed against other Bush Terrorism propaganda dramas of the past. There is one reason, and one reason only, that the Protect America Act expired. Its name is "George W. Bush." That is who refused to agree to the Democrats' offer to extend the law by 21 days (or longer), then repeatedly threatened to veto any such extension ("US President George W. Bush on Wednesday vowed to veto another temporary extension of a domestic spying law"), then directed the always-obedient House Republicans to vote unanimously against the extension, which they (needless to say) did. This vital-to-our-safety piece of legislation expired only because George W. Bush repeatedly blocked its extension. It's just that simple.

All of the right-wing war cheerleaders who will be rendered sleepless as of midnight tonight, petrified that the Muslims who normally lurk menacingly on their corners will now be free to spring attacks since we now live under FISA (1978-8/2007) rather than the PAA (8/2007-2/2008), have only the Warrior-Protector Commander-in-Chief to blame for making us all so very "unprotected and unsafe." And George W. Bush's (absurd) claim this morning that, as of midnight tonight, "it will be harder for our government to keep you safe from terrorist attacks" amounts to a confession that he has deliberately chosen to make us all Unsafe because he is the one who single-handedly ensured the death of this Vital Intelligence Tool. This is an extremely straightforward, clear and indisputable fact which even our national press corps ought to have no trouble conveying.

The mighty Glenn Greenwald, people. He plays here all week!

By the way, following the link will not only take you to the original article; it'll also bring you to Greenwald's take on the harsh glory that is (I swear I'm not making this up) the Heritage Foundation's doomsday clock, which is even now (no, seriously) running down the fractions of seconds until the surveillance provisions expire and we all brutally die.

The case for Clinton.

I have thought about my mother's dream that her daughters -- and thus women -- would continue to demonstrate that they were as good as men a lot lately, while observing the candidacy of Senator Hillary Clinton. She's not the first woman to run -- from Belva Lockwood (1884 and 1888) to Shirley Chisholm (1972) to Carole Moseley Braun (2004), we've had a handful of women gutsy enough to go for the top job -- but she is by far the most serious contender, as demonstrated by the infrastructure and money she has been able to attract. Like Oprah and Madonna, she has 100 percent name recognition, but unlike them, she has co-written and sponsored important legislation, is a very successful two-term Senator from a huge state, spoke of women's rights as human rights at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, and blocked the confirmation of the FDA commissioner to protest the long delay in approving Plan B for over-the-counter use. Of most direct benefit to me, she has created by far the most detailed and only truly universal health care proposal now before the voters.

The reasons people give for not supporting her range from her war authorization vote to fear that her husband will dominate the rest of the election cycle or the White House, but what I hear more is the fact that she's just not "electable" because, as some say, wrinkling their noses, "she not likeable." Creating this self-fulfilling prophecy, the media have piled on, chalking up 62 major incidents of egregious misogyny in the last six months, according to a tally of anti-Hillary sexist episodes in the primary campaign compiled by Melissa McEwan. As Stan Fish wrote on his New York Times blog, to mention her name is to prompt an archive more of vitriol, most of it reflecting a frightening level of woman-hating.

At my Brooklyn polling place on Super Tuesday, I unambivalently -- proudly! -- voted for Hillary Clinton. As I left the building, I started to cry. I'm often moved by voting, but it was a big deal to me, at age 37, to pull the lever for a woman who so clearly has what it takes. More than that, Senator Clinton has endured the attacks and derision we all know happens when women step out of line. She is becoming a sort of martyr-feminist, putting herself out there at great personal cost to put some reality behind our "free to be...you and me" rhetoric. I spoke with other friends who reported being utterly choked up. "I have devoted 40 years -- practically my entire adult life -- to bringing about this possibility, this fulfillment of what seemed an unattainable dream," an older friend wrote me in an email. "It's hard for me to understand those feminists who are voting for an unknown quantity instead of her, when they have this chance of a lifetime. Especially since the rivals' positions are so similar." Other women reported voting for Obama, then feeling surprised at how happy they were that Hillary did well on Super Tuesday. "I felt it would be selfish to vote for her," another friend told me.

Hillary Clinton is my mother's age. What might it mean for a woman of her generation to achieve what we all assumed would go to her daughter's generation? Sometimes I wonder if the pain of those missed opportunities, of wondering what could have been accomplished if one had simply been selfish or lived in a different time, is behind some of the commitment to making sure we don't have a woman in the White House except as First Lady.

A bitter reality is beginning to sink in for me, a daughter of the Second Wave. Here we are: several generations raised with the mantra that a "woman" could be president, and learning that we don't mean any woman who actually exists.

That's from a blogger named Jennifer Baumgardner, over at the Huffington Post.

To be clear, she doesn't even begin to make the case that my objections to Senator Clinton - first and foremost that she authorized going to war (itself almost a critical negative when compared to Obama's clarity at the time) without even bothering to read the NIE - aren't compelling; she just shifts ground to say that most people she sees seem to be against Clinton for less compelling reasons. Like most good exaggerations, it becomes more true the more TV news you watch.

Me, I'm glad I didn't vote for Senator Clinton in the primary, and there's a small but substantial chance I won't vote for her in the general if she gets the nomination. There's the aforementioned irresponsibility of the war vote, there's the tendency to track crazy-ward on foreign policy so that she can claim toughness (starting with her promises of no dialogue with Iran and a state of permanent counter-productivity with Cuba), there's the disturbingly slapdash managerial style she's displayed within the course of this campaign, there's the apparent willingness to damage the party's chances of gain in the Senate and the House by making the nomination a showdown over superdelegates - really, there's really good cause not to vote for her.

But Baumgardner does have a point: Clinton's probably got the best chances of getting into the White House of any woman currently on the political scene. She's got the name recognition, she's got the reputation for intellectual wattage, and she's got the bona fides that come from having actually participated in executive branch maneuverings. There are female governors whom I think may be better suited for the job, but it's not at all clear that they could get past Chris Matthews and the media boys' club firewall.

Plus, anyone who's been paying attention to Clinton for the past decade and a half can see where a good number of the problems were created. The bubble the surrounds her inner circle? Well, that probably came from pulling together while under siege by unscrupulous demagogues from "Hillarycare" through "Monicagate." The sympathy for relatively unfettered executive power in foreign affairs? Try listening to what Republican congressmen were screeching at her family while the Clinton administration was trying to stop genocide in Kosovo. So many of the qualities I lament in the senator seems like natural reactions to grotesque and indefensible actions; you can't help but sympathize.

Given all that, I can't really blame anyone who's willing - even eager - to accept her as a flawed vessel for change; it may be decades before the stars are right and someone finds a way to clear all the institutional hurdles in the way of a female candidacy without getting hurt, and, anyway, Clinton does have more than her share of virtues. [If she'll just fire Mark Penn, they'll instantly start becoming easier to see!]

Again, I don't make any apologies for preferring Obama. It's not just that he's not compromised in the ways Senator Clinton is; he's demonstrated foreign policy judgement I like, his stance on government transparency as his civil liberties record are deeply reassuring after the Bush years, and his ability to articulate a positive American theme and to use it to inspire represents an asset the U.S. has been lacking for a really long time. I admire the man greatly, and there are very few political figures about whom I can say that.

It's just that the Jennifer Baumgardners of this country shouldn't have to feel like second-class citizens.

By Jove, I think they've got it!

Intelligence officials also told reporters Thursday that they were worried that telecommunications companies would be less willing to cooperate in future wiretapping unless they were given immunity.

Precisely! Yes! When telecommunications companies are asked to help the federal government usurp surveillance powers that have not been legally granted it, we want them to be less willing than they have been! We want them to be subject to investigation and the threat of penalty! Now we're talkin'!

So, anyway, the House let the FISA bill go by yesterday; Nancy Pelosi refused to allow a vote on anything with telecom immunity. [An extension of the pre-existing legislation was proposed, but the Republicans banded together to block it, preferring to let all the tools they claim to consider vital lapse in the hopes that that would pressure the Dems into bowing on immunity.] Since the White House insists the update needs to be passed immediately, the next obvious step is to work out a bill that includes all the previous provisions minus the immunity, get it passed, and then let the immunity measures go forward - or not - in future legislation, with more debate.

Obviously, from President All-Or-Nothing and his party of sycophants, a hissy fit is far more likely - promoting the ideal of the unitary executive is way more important than serving the American people on any specific issue, and covering up for massively wealthy corporations is almost as high on the to-do list. That ain't the Democrats' fault.

Until a new bill is passed, parties already under surveillance can remain under surveillance; for new targets, the feds need to demonstrate probable cause - and I somehow suspect the judiciary will generally give them the benefit of the doubt. I honestly don't believe there's cause for panic here (and, unsurprisingly, Glenn Greenwald has more on the subject to back me up), and I'm delighted that House Dems are daring to say the same.

“The president knows full well that he has all the authority he needs to protect the American people,” said Ms. Pelosi, who then referred to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s admonition about fearing only fear itself. “President Bush tells the American people that he has nothing to offer but fear, and I’m afraid that his fear-mongering of this bill is not constructive.”

That right there? Long overdue.

Mind you, I think we can expect Senator McCain to tell us that we're all about to die now. I don't think he'll make a coherent case of it - he'll just present it as brutal fact, and his base will approve.

I do wonder how the Democratic candidates will respond. I'd really hope that they both join in in pushing back against this artificial state of fear the Republican establishment has promoted in order to get its autocratic policies enacted, but I don't really dare to be optimistic.

This sure bodes well.

Hillary Clinton will take the Democratic nomination even if she does not win the popular vote, but persuades enough superdelegates to vote for her at the convention, her campaign advisers say.

The New York senator, who lost three primaries Tuesday night, now lags slightly behind her rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, in the delegate count. She is even further behind in "pledged" delegates, those assigned by virtue of primaries and caucuses.

But Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and will count on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top, if necessary, said Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson.

"I want to be clear about the fact that neither campaign is in a position to win this nomination without the support of the votes of the superdelegates," Wolfson told reporters in a conference call.

"We don't make distinctions between delegates chosen by million of voters in a primary and those chosen between tens of thousands in caucuses," Wolfson said. "And we don't make distinctions when it comes to elected officials" who vote as superdelegates at the convention.

"We are interested in acquiring delegates, period," he added.

I should add that I don't take the threat all that seriously yet. We're a long way away from March, let alone the convention, and if the coming weeks aren't kind to the Clinton campaign I have to assume the risk of career-breaking humiliation in a losing fight for superdelegates will loom larger and larger as a disincentive. [We can revisit the subject if the weeks are kind.]

Anyway, what's interesting here is that the campaign is badly enough wounded to be saying this kind of thing to reporters. I mean, the last week or so has featured a number of prominent newspaper stories about the potential for a superdelegate-driven win that overturns the popular vote, and as far as I can tell the Democratic response to those stories has been overwhelmingly negative. Voters don't like to be told that their votes aren't the bottom line, reasonably enough.

For the campaign to be saying now that they'll make a grab nonetheless, come hell or high water, sure seems tone-deaf. I mean, spectacularly tone-deaf. That, in turn, makes me think it's not so much a reasoned position or campaign tactic (though they may have justified it within their own ranks as a kind of clearing of the ground for later action) as it is a publicly-conducted stage of grieving. They're not campaigning here; they're just angry.

If they want to win, they should probably try harder to keep the psychodrama to themselves.

Today's most satisfying headline?

"Conyers Introduces Contempt Resolution, Call for Lawsuit against White House."

Aw, yeah. That's gooooood headline.

Not quite a profile in courage.

Today, the Senate passed a bill authorizing and funding intelligence programs for the current fiscal year. The trick about this one is that includes a provision imposing the interrogation standards contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual across the entire federal system - or, more to the point, banning the use of "enhanced" tactics/torture at the CIA. With five honorable exceptions, Republican senators opposed the bill, and President Bush is expected to veto it. No surprises there.

What is something of a surprise, given his former prominence on the issue, is that John McCain was not one of the honorable exceptions. I suppose it's possible he had a reason deeper than just wanting to suck up to the right-wingers who loathe him, but the furtive way he approached the vote, with his office shrugging off queries from the press and running silent, doesn't exactly inspire a sense that he's passionate about his choice. A couple of years ago, he was arguing that mistreating prisoners would ultimately jeopardize American soldiers; now . . . well, let's be charitable and say he'd probably rather resolve the issue as president rather than argue it in public.

Or we can be embarrassed for him, as he sacrifices deeply held belief for political expediency. Either way.

Holy crap! Upbeat political news from Iraq?

As with any Iraqi legislation, it's certainly possible that there are devils in the details - still, for the record, it sure looks like the government there did itself some good today.

Using old-fashioned behind-the-scenes politicking, Iraq’s Parliamentary leaders pushed through three divisive laws that had been delayed for months by bitter maneuvering between factions and, recently, threats to dissolve the legislative body.

More than any legislation approved so far, the three measures have the potential to spur reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites and set the country on the road to a more representative government.

The three laws are the 2008 budget, a law outlining the scope of provincial powers — a crucial aspect of Iraq’s self-definition as a federal state — and an amnesty that will cover thousands of the detainees held in Iraqi jails, including thousands of Sunnis, many of whom have been held without charges for months and, in a few cases, more than a year. It will be the largest release at one time since 2003.

So far, it's seemed like the real story of the surge has been that peace was giving ethnic groups the opportunity to draw away from one another and consolidate into separate, quietly antagonistic spheres - good in the short term, maybe, but dangerous in the long; if, on the other hand, the central government really does get its shit together and start hammering out consensus positions . . . well, shit, maybe there's hope for the place after all. [Note: this would not retroactively make the Bush administration competent.]

I'm not hugely optimistic yet, but this is a really good turn.



Late Edit: All of that said, violence and civilian casualties are apparently back on the rise, and our military readiness continues to degrade. Just in case anyone's getting complacent or anything.

What I said, only better.

If you walked my long and winding road on the matter of the Clinton campaign and the significance of Patti Solis Doyle and you just want more - or, y'know, if you didn't read it, but would like to see a professional handle the material - Joshua Green has a strong piece up at the Atlantic on the matter.

Just so you know.

Dammit!

I meant to shill for Donna Edwards before the big day - there are signs on my front yard and everything!

Ah, well. It all turned out okay in the end.

[The Gilchrist race is another matter altogether, but, thankfully, it's not my district - I don't take the bad news quite as hard. Mind you, if Harris does win the primary and is a lunatic, I'm hoping it'll raise the odds of a Dem taking the seat.]

Another Wednesday morning round of rumination.

My earlier comments on Virginia? About fifty percent discredited.

Obama did indeed take it as part of what seems to be another dramatic sweep . . .

75% of the votes in DC? Damn.

. . . but McCain's victory was much less close than the early polling suggested. 50-41 (with 99% of the votes counted) isn't the sort of thumping you expect to see an anointed front-runner give an underfunded insurgent, but neither is it the kind of win you expect to see an apologetic asterisk beside. Combine it with a huge win in DC and what's shaping up to be a healthy one in the great state of Maryland, and you start seeing Johnny Mac get some of his magic back.

[Rhyming games notwithstanding, I'm not entirely pleased by that. Huckabee's startling performance over the last few elections kept the talking heads on television and the op-ed pages from settling into a nice, misleadingly easy narrative with which they could coast - if only for a few days.]

All of that said, McCain's problem isn't momentum, per se - it's been clear that he's the de facto Republican candidate for an eternity in campaign time now. It's that the Republican base as it's come to be understood loathes him; I don't know that a few wins will change that much.

As for the Democratic race, we've crossed an important line: it's now genuinely hard to construct a realistic scenario where Senator Clinton wins. The way the nice folks at CNN broke it down during last night's palaver (IIRC), she needs to take over fifty-six percent of the delegates in Texas and Ohio to head toward the convention with a chance, and as I look back over her record to date, she's only managed to hit those kinds of highs in Arkansas and New York, her home states. [Squeezing out a string of lesser victories might set her up to argue to the superdelegates that momentum is on her side, even if she doesn't have the greater numbers, but I don't know that a majority would be sympathetic.] Basically, I don't think the odds are on her side.

Granted, her latest numbers from Ohio are startlingly strong (there's an obvious caveat, though: Obama hasn't really started campaigning there yet). But, as for Texas: the first thing to recognize is that it's not a normal primary. What it is is fantastically, hypnotically, gloriously screwy, and not necessarily in ways the lady would want.

See, there are thirty-one separate primaries in Texas, each almost guaranteed to split extremely small numbers of delegates relatively evenly (for a total of 126), and also a statewide caucus, comprised of precinct caucuses, which yield up 67 delegates through a . . . well, y'know, let's just work extensively with quotes again:

While there is no Statewide Texas Primary, there is a Statewide Texas Caucus, which will allocate 67 delegates 42 of these (”At Large Delegates”) will ultimately come from precinct caucuses, while 25 will be PLEOs: party/elected officials. PLEOs will be pledged delegates, not superdelegates, so in practical terms they amount to the same thing. These caucuses will occur on the precinct level, and are similar to the Iowa Caucuses - except practically nobody knows that they exist.

With the exception of parts of the Rio Grande Valley, there is no Democratic Political Machine in Texas. In much of the State, there is very little Democratic Party infrastructure, and very few precinct captains. In short, whichever campaign organizes more succesfully will win the Texas caucuses. There is little existing organization that the campaigns can tap into, which means that organization will have to come from the campaigns and from the grassroots. This is why the Obama campaign has already announced that it will open 10 field offices in Texas, and why the Clinton campaign will surely do likewise. Grassroots Obama activists currently have 78 events scheduled within 100 mile radii of Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, while grassroots Hillary activists only have 5 events scheduled in the same geographical space. Grassroots Obama activists independent of the campaign also have opened offices on their own in Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio.

Got that? Less than two-thirds of the delegates will be apportioned through micro-primaries that would seem to impose a rough balance in a tight rice, and the remainder will come out of caucuses - where the Obama camp's organizational focus is already in evidence. [There's more here and here, if you're curious.] There are weeks to go, but - state-wide polling notwithstanding - it's not at all obvious that the Clinton team will win Texas at all, let alone win it big. And that's without factoring in the momentum Obama will have if he keeps on dominating contests along the way!

Anyway, Clinton's hanging on by a pinky - that's what last night means for the Dems. I think what follows from that is that her last, best chance to win is to blast Obama until he's radioactive (while praying for a massive flood of superdelegate affection), and to hope that the resentments she accrues from going ultra-negative won't haunt her too badly at the convention and the general election. I don't see how she can creative a message of pure positivism than can rival his in just a few weeks - particularly not after eight straight losses. The thing is, her campaign's last great experiment in bloodshed backfired badly; her own popular image (to say nothing of her husband's) still hasn't recovered.

So, what's she gonna do? I don't know. It's largely down to Mark Penn, Inexplicable Survivor of All Purges, and I wouldn't dare to anticipate his thinking; I get enough headaches from reacting to it as it comes.

The only really good thing likely to come from this is a lot more rhetoric espousing a policy of basic decency toward immigrants; Clinton can't afford to lose ground among Texas's Latinos, and Obama's going to be trying hard to peel them off anyway. Plus, in all fairness, they're both genuinely decent people (nine years out of ten), and they both have good ideas that'll seem very relevant along the border. For the last couple of years, immigration has been presented most prominently through a negative lens; some of the damage done by that might finally start getting undone.

And I'm not just saying all that because I want to see Tom Tancredo get more and more enraged until his head finally explodes.